[ICMI-News] ICMI News 2: February 2008

ICMI News 2: February 2008
A Bimonthly Email Newsletter from the
ICMI-International Commission on Mathematical
Instruction
Editor: Jaime Carvalho e Silva, Dep. Matematica,
Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal
CONTENTS
1. Challenges for Mathematics Educators in 2008
2. Symposium on the Occasion of the 100th Anniversary of ICMI
3. PME welcomes you!
4. Post-ICME-11 Workshop
5. ICME-12 (2012) to be held in Korea
6. ICMI Study 19: Proof and Proving in Mathematics Education
7. Calendar of Events of Interest to the ICMI Community
8. Historical vignettes: How the first ICMI
study was born, a personal recollection
9. Subscribing to ICMI News
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Challenges for Mathematics Educators in 2008
This newsletter will appear immediately prior to
the ICMI Centennial Symposium hosted
by the Italian community of mathematicians and mathematics educators, see
http://www.unige.ch/math/EnsMath/Rome2008. In her
first Editorial, Michèle Artigue mentioned
the inaugural president, Felix Klein, who served
from 1908 until his death at age 76 in 1925.
Henri Fehr was the first secretary until 1939.
These two men served together for more than
ten years in the formative years of our organization.
What exciting but difficult work it must have
been. On the one hand they were at the forefront
of a new endeavour, producing an international
voice in the field for the first time. On the
other hand, communications must have been
difficult, both had many other responsibilities,
and they lived through difficult political times.
Our work is still exciting. New insights and
research results surprise and stimulate us. New
areas of investigation continue to emerge.
However our current challenges are both different
and parallel, both smaller and larger.
We are challenged by the volume and speed of
communications rather than by delays.
However we are faced with a new communication
challenge, namely, to reach all those
who have a stake in mathematics education. Klein
and Fehr's world was smaller. We now
want to reach out to primary school teachers and
policy makers as well as to mathematicians.
We are concerned to involve developing countries
like Niue, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Namibia
as well as those of Europe and North America.
This is not just a matter of finding efficient
country representatives, although that is
especially important this year with the General
Assembly
in Mexico in July. We also need to find the voice
that ensures that we can hear each other.
All those involved in mathematics education
remain challenged by the variety of their
responsibilities.
Our enthusiasm for our work, other institutional
duties, and/or our full email In-Box should not
result in work-life imbalance. This is not just a
question of physical and mental health, but we
risk developing insular perspectives on our work
if we are not involved in a wider world. I see
dissociation from everyday life as a serious
danger. Even within our work I often hear people
regret that they have little time to be in the
classroom, or to read enough, or to support or
collaborate sufficiently with their colleagues.
There are no easy answers to these stresses.
With respect to the politics of international
collaboration, the challenge remains but it is
more subtle.
I suspect that we are more challenged by cultural
misunderstanding (talking past each other like
ships in the night) than by the impact of
geo-politics. It will require attention,
tolerance, and effort
to meet this challenge. But what a great
opportunity we have to work towards such
collaboration
in Monterrey in July.
I look forward to seeing you there.
Bill Barton, Vice-President, ICMI, b.barton at auckland.ac.nz
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2. Symposium on the Occasion of the 100th Anniversary of ICMI
The First Century of the International
Commission_on Mathematical Instruction (1908-2008)
Reflecting and Shaping the World of Mathematics Education
Accademia dei Lincei (Wednesday to Friday, March 5-7)
and Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana (Saturday, March 8)
In Rome in March 2008 there will be a symposium
to celebrate the centennial of the ICMI
(International Commission on Mathematical
Instruction). The ICMI was founded in Rome in 1908
during the International Mathematics Congress
with the aim of supporting and expanding the
interest of mathematicians in teaching in
schools. Its first president was Felix Klein.
Something similar was attempted in many different
subjects but only in mathematics was there
success in obtaining widespread international
collaboration in order face problems relating to
the social image of mathematics, to difficulties
in learning and to links with research and
applications.
The convention for the centennial to be held in
Rome foresees a selected group of invited
participants (about 180 people). It will be of
great importance: starting out from a historical
analysis
of the principal themes regarding the activities
of the ICMI (reforms in the teaching of the
sciences,
teacher training, relations with mathematicians
and with research, and so on), debate will focus
on
identifying the future directions of research in
mathematics education and the possible action to
be
taken to improve the level of scientific culture in the various countries.
As has always been the case with the ICMI, the
scientific committee, which met from 3rd - 5th
February 2006 at the Department of Mathematics at
the "La Sapienza" University of Rome, is
intercontinental
in its membership. It is composed of researchers
who are well-known figures in the field of the
didactics
of mathematics, both for the research that they
have carried out and for the institutional
positions they
hold. The Organising Committee is made up of
professors from Italian Departments of
Mathematics.
The 'Enciclopedia Italiana' will publish the proceedings.
The web site
http://www.unige.ch/math/EnsMath/Rome2008/welcome.html
contains the program, the
composition of the IPC and of the organizing
committee, the summaries of the plenary talks and
of the
working groups, the list of the participants and the rich History of ICMI.
Ferdinando Arzarello, chair of International
Programme Committee, ferdinando.arzarello at unito.it
------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. PME welcomes you!
As an affiliated organization of ICMI, the
International Group for the Psychology of
Mathematics
Education (PME) is a very active academic
community. PME came into existence at ICME 3 in
1976.
Every year PME hosts an annual conference,
following the first meeting that was held in
Utrecht, The
Netherlands in 1977. A joint conference of PME32
and PME-NA XXX (a chapter of PME at North America)
will be held from 17th to 21st of July, 2008, at
Morelia, Michoacán, México. Each PME conference
has
a specific theme. The theme of PME32 & PME-NA XXX
is Mathematical Ideas: History, Education and
Cognition. Based on the theme, plenary speakers
and plenary panellists are invited members of PME,
with some non-member experts. At the conference,
PME members' research can be presented as
'Research Reports', 'Short Oral Communications',
and 'Posters'. Members with the same interests
can organize 'Working Sessions' and 'Discussion
Groups'. For contemporary research issues, members
are also able to form teams to conduct 'Research Forums'.
The major goals of PME are:
i. to promote international contact and
exchange of scientific information in
the field of mathematical education;
ii. to promote and stimulate
interdisciplinary research in the aforesaid area;
and
iii. to further a deeper and more correct
understanding of the psychological and
other aspects of teaching and learning
mathematics and the implications thereof.
Based on PME members' work during the last thirty
years, the PME Handbook on the Psychology of
Mathematics Education was published in 2006.
Focusing on the contents of the handbook, the
editors,
Paolo Boero and Ángel Gutiérrez, will run one of
the four PME sessions at ICME 11.
The topics and presenters of the other three PME sessions are::
o Mathematics Teacher Education
Peter Sullivan and Barbara Jaworski
o Affect, equity and diversity
Joanne R. Becker and Ferdinand Rivera
o Technology and Mathematics Education
Colleen Vale and Carolyn Kieran
The four sessions are representative of the work
of PME, and the presenters are all active PME
members.
Participants of ICME 11 are welcome to attend all
four PME sessions. In particular, PME is
encouraging
participants of ICME 11 to come to Morelia to attend PME32 and PME-NA XXX.
Fou-Lai LIN, President of PME, linfl at math.ntnu.edu.twhttp://igpme.org/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Post-ICME-11 Workshop
Invitation to Attend One-day Workshop
Classroom Assessment: The Impact on Teaching and Learning in
Non-University Tertiary Institutions
Sadie Bragg, a member of the United States
National Commission on Mathematics Instruction
(USNCMI)
and a co-chair with George Ekol (Kyambogo
University, Uganda) for DG 23- Current Problems
and
Challenges in Non-University Tertiary Mathematics
Education (NUTI) at ICME -11, will lead a one-day
workshop entitled, "Classroom Assessment: The
Impact on Teaching and Learning in NUTI," on
Monday,
July 14, 2008, after the ICME Congress. Marilyn
Mays, a former member of USNCMI, and Cheryl
Cleaves,
the Executive Director of the American
Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges
(AMATYC), will be
co-leaders.
The workshop is funded by The United States'
National Science Foundation and co-sponsored by
the
USNCMI and AMATYC. It is designed to explore
further the topic of classroom assessment and
will be
an outgrowth of the DG-23 discussion related to
this issue. Participation is by invitation only
and will
include invitees from several of the countries
represented at the Congress. DG-23
participants/attendees
will be given preference for selection for the
workshop. Note that the number of seats
available is limited.
Those invited to attend will be funded for two
additional nights of lodging (July 13 and 14,
2008) and some
meals. No funding is available for travel expenses (e.g. airfare, taxi, etc.)
For more information about participating in the
workshop, contact Sadie Bragg, Professor of
Mathematics
and Provost, Borough of Manhattan Community
College, The City University of New York at
sbragg at bmcc.cuny.edu. (Please place ICME-11
after Congress Workshop in the subject line.)
Bernard R. Hodgson, Secretary-General of ICMI, bhodgson at mat.ulaval.ca
------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. ICME-12 (2012) to be held in Korea
Three bids for hosting the Twelfth International
Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME-12) in
2012
have been submitted to the Executive Committee of
ICMI, namely (in alphabetical order) from
-- China (Shanghai)
-- Korea (Seoul)
-- South Africa (Durban)
Site visits were organised early in 2007, the
visiting team being composed of ICMI President
Michèle Artigue,
Vice-President Bill Barton and myself. The bids
were thoroughly discussed by the ICMI EC at its
meeting in
London last June, which led to requests for
additional pieces of information from the bidding
countries. The
final decision was made through an email
discussion that took place between October and
December 2007.
The high quality of the three proposed bids made
the decision task especially difficult.
The ICMI Executive Committee is pleased to
announce its decision of accepting the invitation
from Korea.
We hope that the international mathematical
education community will enthusiastically receive
the invitation
of our Korean colleagues for 2012, so to make
ICME-12 a memorable event from Korean, Asiatic and
international perspectives. The precise dates of
ICME-12 will be announced later and a Korean
delegation
will be present at ICME-11 to provide information on the 2012 ICME.
The ICMI Executive Committee wishes to express
its deepest gratitude to the mathematics
education and
mathematics communities in the three bidding
countries, and especially to the three persons
who chaired
the committees that prepared the bids, namely
Professors Jianpan Wang (China), Sung Je Cho
(Korea)
and Renuka Vithal (South Africa). It goes much
beyond lip-service to say how impressed the ICMI
EC
was by the high professionalism shown in the
preparation of the dossiers and the dedication of
the bidding
teams. It is our hope that the enthusiasm of
those who supported these bids will reflect not
only in ICME-12
(and ICME-11!), but in future ICMEs as well.
The ICMI Executive Committee wishes to stress
that since two of the current EC members are from
one of
bidding countries --- namely Vice-President Jill
Adler (South Africa) and Member-at-Large
Frederick Leung
(China / Hong Kong) ---, they have taken no part
in the discussion or decision-making about
ICME-12, nor
have had access to the competing bids.
Bernard R. Hodgson, Secretary-General of ICMI, bhodgson at mat.ulaval.ca
------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. ICMI Study 19: Proof and Proving in Mathematics Education
The International Commission on Mathematical Instruction (ICMI) announces
its next ICMI Study: Proof and Proving in Mathematics Education.
The Study Conference will be held in Taipei,
Taiwan, from May 10 to May 15, 2009.
The International Program Committee (IPC) invites individuals or groups to
submit original contributions. A submission should represent a significant
contribution to knowledge about learning and teaching proof. It may address
questions from one or more of the study themes, or further issues relating to
these, but it should identify its primary focus.
The Study themes are set out in
the Discussion Document which is available in the "conference program"
section of the ICMI Study 19 website (still under construction but functional)
http://jps.library.utoronto.ca/ocs/index.php?cf=8 (or via Google: 'ICMI 19').
Submissions will be a maximum of 6 pages, including references and figures,
written in English, the language of the conference. Further technical details
about the format of submissions will be available on the Study website.
Important dates:
By 30 June 2008:
Potential authors upload their papers to the conference website.
By 15 November 2008:
Potential authors receive the result of the refereeing
process. Invitations to participate in the conference are sent to authors whose
papers are accepted.
International Program Committee
Gila Hanna (Canada), co-chair; Michael de Villiers (South Africa), co-chair
Ferdinando Arzarello (Italy); Tommy Dreyfus
(Israel); Viviane Durand-Guerrier (France);
Hans Niels Jahnke (Germany); Fou-Lai Lin (Taiwan); Annie Selden (USA);
David Tall (UK); Oleksiy Yevdokimov (Australia);
Bernard R. Hodgson (Canada), ex officio
ICMI Executive Advisors: Hyman Bass (USA); Mariolina Bartolini-Bussi (Italy)
Gila Hanna, co-Chair of the International
Programme Committee, ghanna at oise.utoronto.ca
------------------------------------------------------------------------
7. Calendar of Events of Interest to the ICMI Community
The 13th International Seminar on Education of Talented Children in Mathematics
Soongsil University, 511 Sangdo-dong, Dongjak-gu,
Seoul, Korea, February 23, 2008
yhchoe1940 at yahoo.co.kr
Symposium on the Occasion of the 100th Anniversary of ICMI
Rome, Italy, March 5-8, 2008
http://www.unige.ch/math/EnsMath/Rome2008/
2008 Conference on Math Education and Social Justice
"Creating Balance in an Unjust World"
Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY, USA, April 4-6, 2008
http://www.radicalmath.org/conference
Future Curricular Trends in School Algebra and Geometry
Univ. Chicago, USA, May 2-4, 2008
http://www.mathcurriculumcenter.org/conferences.php
Joint ICMI /IASE Study Statistics Education in School Mathematics:
Challenges for Teaching and Teacher Education
ICMI Study and IASE Round Table Conference
ITESM, Monterrey, Mexico, June 30-July 4, 2008
http://www.ugr.es/~icmi/iase_study/
ICME 11 - Mexico 2008
11th International Congress on Mathematical Education
Monterrey, Mexico, July 6 - 13, 2008.
http://icme11.org/
HPM 2008: History and Pedagogy of Mathematics
The HPM Satellite Meeting of ICME 11,
National Mexican University, Mexico City (UNAM), Mexico, July 14-18, 2008
http://www.red-cimates.org.mx/HPM2008.htm
PME32 & PME-NA30 Mexico joint conference
Morelia, Mexico, July 17-21 2008.
http://www.pme32-na30.org.mx/annou.htm
PME33: Thessaloniki - Greece, July 19-24, 2009
PME34: Univ. Fed. Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil - July 2010
http://igpme.org/
10 Iranian Mathematics Education Conference (IMEC-10)
Yazd, Iran, August 12-15, 2008
Contact: a_rejali at cc.iut.ac.ir, soheila_azad at yahoo.comhttp://www.imec10yazd.com
TIME-2008: Technology and its Integration in Mathematics Education
Tshwane Univ. of Tech., Buffelspoort, South Africa, September 22-26, 2008
http://time.tut.ac.za/
"Models in Developing Mathematics Education"
The Mathematics Education into the 21st Century Project
Dresden, Saxony, Germany, September 11-17, 2009
<mailto:arogerson at inetia.pl>arogerson at inetia.pl
------------------------------------------------------------------------
8. Historical vignettes: How the first ICMI study
was born, a personal recollection
Let me go back far into the past.
In 1948 a famous British biologist,
J.B.S.Haldane, gave in Paris a lecture on
evolution
for a few French students, and I was among them.
He was a marxist thinker and had
large views on many subjects, including
mathematics. A few sentences of his struck
me for life. The computers were new and heavy, but Haldane had a prophetic view
on their possible influence on the evolution of
mathematics. Solving an equation, he said,
would be more and more finding good algorithms
for numerical solutions. This would apply
to functional equations as well, and change our
views on functions. Functions as they are
taught, 'elementary' or 'specia' functions, are
all tabulated functions; they were
introduced and used after the Gütenberg printing
revolution. Functions as we should see
them are linked to all possible processes of
construction and approximation by means of
computers. All mathematical aspects would be
modified after computers as they had been
after printing.
Hearing Haldane I immediately thought (as far as
I remember) of my recent discoveries as
a mathematics student: series of functions,
approximation theory, general topology.
Mathematics
as they had developed in the 1900s were well
prepared for the changes to occur in the 1950s.
Viewed from the 2000s, the intuition of Haldane
was a very positive view on mathematics,
its role and possible evolution.
However it took some time to fully understand the
strong linkage in both directions between
Computers and Informatics on one hand, and all
parts of Mathematics on the other. In 1982
the International Mathematical Union (IMU),
following a proposition of its president Lennart
Carleson, made an important step: the Rolf
Nevanlinna Prize, parallel to the Fields Medals,
was created on "Mathematical aspects of
Information Science". The announcement of the
Prize was made at the Warsaw International Congress in 1983.
The idea of a study on the influence of computers
and informatics on mathematics and its
teaching was in the air. It was formalized by the
newly elected ICMI EC, after a preliminary
meeting in Orsay at the end of 1982 where
Geoffrey Howson as secretary, Bent Chritiansen
as vice-president and myself as president
established the planning of actions to take during
our term, beginning in 1983, with the help of Ed
Jacobsen, the Unesco officer in charge of
mathematical education. The general scheme of the
studies was sketched at that time: a theme
of current interest, a program committee, a
discussion document, an invited meeting, and a
selection of contributions for a book. We agreed
to begin with the theme on computers and
informatics, and to consider their influence not
only on mathematics teaching, but on
mathematics itself.
1983 and 1984 were busy years for ICMI. We had
special sessions at the Warsaw ICM in 1983,
we had to prepare and then to held the Adelaïde
ICME in 1984, and we were involved in several
regional congresses. But the first study took
form. We decided to rely on the French
subcommission,
chaired by Jean Martinet from Strasbourg, and on
François Pluvinage, director of the Strasbourg
IREM (Institut de recherche sur l'enseignement
des mathématiques) for hosting the symposium.
A first draft of the discussion document was
written by François Pluvinage in Strasbourg,
Bernard
Cornu in Grenoble and myself in Orsay, in one
morning, using the new communication facilities.
The real work began with a meeting of the program
committee at the Ecole Normale Supérieure
in Paris: the committee, elected by the ICMI EC,
consisted of R.F. Churchouse from Cardiff,
B. Cornu, A.E. Ershov from Novosobirsk, A.G.
Howson, J.P. Kahane, J.H. van Lint from Eindhoven,
F. PLuvinage, A. Ralston from Buffalo and M.
Yamaguti from Kyoto. The discussion document
was written between January and March, 1984,
published in many ways and languages, in
particular in English in l'Enseignement
Mathématique. We received many contributions,
collected
by the IREM in Strasbourg, we issued the
invitations, and for a week in March, 1985, we
enjoyed
the beautiful though somewhat spartan hospitality
of our colleagues in Strasbourg, for the main
meeting. Then came the writing of the
Proceedings, published by Cambridge University
Press,
while the IREM kept and published a collection of
the Supporting papers, about 600 pages. The
whole process was a fascinating experience for
me, and a good model for the ICMI studies to
come, in which Geoffrey Howson and myself
collaborated very closely (though in every case
the real organiser was Geoffrey).
The Proceedings of this first study were well
received, the main reservation being that they
were
not largely distributed. An excellent report,
containing this criticism, was published in 1986
in
ZDM (Zentralblatt fûr Didaktik der Mathematik).
The Strasbourg meeting was followed by meetings
in Luminy (France) and Monastir (Tunisia) in
January and February, 1986, and it was the basis
of the invited lecture I gave at the Berkeley ICM
in 1986 on "Enseignement mathématique,
ordinateurs et calculettes". A new edition proved
necessary. It was made by Bernard Cornu
and Tony Ralston, with a lot of new material, and
was published in 1992 as a Unesco
document. Again, the distribution was not what it should have been.
Since then it seems to me that the conception of
mathematics changed in many ways,
proving that computers and informatics do not
replace brain nor mathematics, but allow
and force brain and mathematics to plough new
fields. Mathematics teaching has still to
take advantage of informatics, or Information
sciences, not only as a tool for a better
understanding of most classical subjects in
mathematics, but also in order to provide new
ideas about what could be and what should be
taught in our times. A reference to the first
ICMI study is still relevant in that matter.
Jean-Pierre Kahane, former President of ICMI, jean-pierre.kahane at math.u-psud.fr
Note from the editor: the second edition of the
first ICMI Study is available onine at the
UNESCO website. Go to
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ulis/
and use the keyword Ralston in the search form.
The second edition of the first ICMI Study
will be the first item to show up as a result of the search.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
9. SUBSCRIBING TO ICMI News
There are two ways of subscribing to ICMI News:
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Previous issues can be seen at:
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